Patton Oswalt joins the cast of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD for an upcoming episode...
Patton Oswalt has been cast as Agent Eric Koenig for an upcoming episode of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD TV series. Koenig is another minor Marvel character, albeit one with a long history in the Marvel Universe, having first appeared in 1966's Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos #27. The comic book Eric Koenig was (according to Comic Vine) "a former nazi who defected to the allied side" but something tells us that this won't be quite the same guy.
Mr. Oswalt, in his usual self-deprecating fashion, launched into some humor about his own body type and where he might fit in the world of Agents of SHIELD when he heard who he would be playing:
“When they first told me the character’s name, I’ll admit the first thing I did is I went on Wikipedia and looked up the M.O.D.O.K. character to see if Koenig was maybe his name before he became M.O.D.O.K., but it wasn’t. They keep on talking about the Clairvoyant in the show and I’m like, ‘is that M.O.D.O.K.? Am I M.O.D.O.K.?”
But if anyone on that show knows their Marvel comics, it's certainly Patton Oswalt. “They’re using the Jonathan Hickman model of wheels-within-wheels,” explains Oswalt. “It’s getting into that John Le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy world now, which creates even more tension because you don’t know, is someone lying to me, and are they doing me a favor by lying to me? That’s really great stuff to play as an actor.”
The arrival of Agent Koenig on the scene comes as part of a flurry of new Marvel characters joining the show for the final episodes of season one, including Adrian Pasdar as Hulk foe Colonel Talbot and J. August Richards returning as comic book cyborg Deathlok, and others. Agents of SHIELD seems to be trying to make its case to fans that it deserves a second season, and this is certainly one way to do it.
You can read all of Mr. Oswalt's statements on joining the cast of Agents of SHIELD (where he definitely geeks out over the show) over at Marvel.com.